I know Juffure was a British trading post and my portrait of the village bears no resemblance to the way it was. But the portrait I gave was true of nearly all the other villages in Gambia. I, we, need a place called Eden. My people need Pilgrim's Rock.
The portrait of a person is one of the most difficult things to do. It means you must almost bring the presence of that person photographed to other people in such a way that they don't have to know that person personally, but that they are still confronted with a human being that they won't forget. That's a portrait.
Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.
The diagram of the house is a portrait of the family, a true portrait, whether it's sad or happy.
I've always felt the portrait is an occasion for marks to happen. I've never viewed the portrait as about the sitter. Even when I go to the National Portrait Gallery, I'm not thinking about the sitter; I'm thinking about how the artist chose that color or that highlight. It becomes about the time, place, and context.
Strider's bedroom "The only thing hanging on the wall that wasn't a weapon was the portrait just over the bed. No. Not true, he thought then. The portrait was a weapon, too. Of seduction. In it Strider was utterly naked and whisking through the cloads like an avenging angel. He was holding a teddy bear in one hand and a stream of pink ribbons in the other. Anya had given him the nearly life-size monstrasity as a joke. But the joke was on her. He loved the thing.
My responsibility isn't to paint a flattering portrait; my responsibility is to paint a real portrait, a true portrait.
What brought the British to the Gambia in the first place - which was bigger than it is now - was trade in ivory because the Gambia had a lot of elephants. They wiped out all the elephants and ended up selling Africans.
Tim Thornton's portrait of a pop culture obsession is so convincing that one can't help wishing that his fictional alt rock band actually existed, or suspecting that they did. The Alternative Hero is a weirdly compelling portrait of fanatic fandom which reads like High Fidelity at high volume.
We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.
A photographic portrait needs more collaboration between sitter and artist than a painted portrait.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
When you are doing portraits, you have that intimacy with someone for a few minutes. For a really good portrait, you don't take the portrait - it's given.
I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself.
Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village.... I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and elucidating?
'MaerskKendal' is a rarity with its British flag, the 'LONDON' home port painted on its bow, its two British chief officers, and its portrait of the queen in the mess room, apparently common courtesy on British ships, but a little alarming to me.
To demand the portrait that will be a complete portrait of a person is as futile as to demand that a motion picture be condensed into a single still.